CYF admits its mistakes led to toddler’s death

Child, Youth and Family has admitted multiple failures by staff contributed to an injured Southland toddler’s death at home, but it is fighting to stop a recording of those admissions being made public.

The 17-month-old boy died in October 2015, after being discharged home from hospital, despite concerns he was being abused. The boy had a broken leg, broken tooth, crushed hand and other injuries which CYF believed had been inflicted by his mother or her boyfriend.

In its file on the family, the agency said both the toddler and his 3-year-old sister were ‘‘unsafe’’, but allowed him to return home, where he died five days later.

CYF reviewed its handling of the case, and a manager met with the boy’s family in September.

The family secretly recorded the meeting, and provided the recording to Radio NZ.

During the meeting, the CYF representative said no-one could have predicted the toddler’s death.

She admitted multiple errors had been made, but maintained the agency had fulfilled its statutory obligations.

In 2015, while facing multiple violence charges, the mother’s boyfriend was granted electronic bail on the condition he not live at the family’s home or be unsupervised around children.

When he later sought to return home, a judge asked CYF to assess the risk to the woman’s children.

That request had been misunderstood and the subsequent report was ‘‘poor . . . not one of our best’’, the manager told the boy’s family. The man was allowed to return to the family home with a CYF safety plan in place for the family – albeit one the manager later admitted was insufficient and not adhered to.

In October, the boy was taken to hospital with a broken leg and multiple other injuries.

His doctors, CYF and police were all concerned about his safety and that of his sister, who had been left at home with the man.

However, the boy discharged to go home.

On October 13, 2015, the mother found her son dead in bed.

An autopsy revealed bruises his left eye and the right side of his forehead. He had suffered a blow to the back of the head and spinal injuries. When first questioned, the mother’s boyfriend said the boy had been fine when he went to bed. The man was later charged with murder, but was found dead in prison after a suspected suicide the following month.

In the meeting with the toddler’s family, the CYF manager was unable to explain why he was discharged from hospital back to the home where his injuries were

was believed to have occurred.

Social workers weren’t sure they needed to be concerned about the cause of his injuries, she said.

‘‘I suppose, again, if we look at it with the benefit of hindsight, we were thinking, yeah, we probably should have been more worried.’’

CYF urged RNZ not to broadcast the recording, saying it would undermine trust in the agency.

The boy’s family said they doubted CYF had learnt from its mistakes, or that it would make the necessary changes.

‘‘You still have the same staff, you still have problems with under-resourcing, problems with your staff not being trained properly,’’ the boy’s aunt said.